Not sure how far y'all are in developing a stage up from the forest bow, but here are some suggestions. I imagine many of these have already been considered if a bow upgrade is on the board:

- Bow could have slightly higher damage than forest bow, much like the bone knife to the short sword.

- Bow could have an increased speed, comparable to the short sword.

- Bow could be magical, using a command word with mps to increase damage/speed for short periods of time (ex. iron bow of concentration).

- Silk bow sting empowered with monster oil (or quickling oil, soulfeeder oil or other name) could be a quest to get the upgrade (ex. quickling bow or soulfeeder bow).

- Bow could have flaws to compensate for bonuses, like an increase in power reduces dexterity or agility.

- Bow could have a curse that turns passive monsters aggressive or reduces vitality when fighting.

- Bow could damage user per strike and transfer that damage to the monster.

- Instead of bow, a new alchemy, type of ore or engineering process could empower arrows with extra damage or bleed/poison damage. Bleed/poison damage is like a repeating damage per "round". Bleed5 could do 5 damage per round 5 times (ex. power arrows, poisoned arrows or bleed arrows) .

- Bow distance could be increased or tracker arrows could hit enemies around corners.

Sorry if these seem like bad ideas, repeat older ideas or aren't game compatible.

Perhaps certain bows should require certains stats. This would encourage people to speialize:
* A long bow gives more damage, but it is only really effective if you have high strength.
* A composite bow allows the user to shoot more frequently, but requires agil to be useful.
* A targeting bow reduces agil, but increases dex. It requires dex to be useful.

Perhaps the agil bonus of a composite bow could be min(max(floor((agility-20)/5),0),5). This way the bonus would increase as you increase your agility stat.